


Spoonful of Sugar

by hufflepirate



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Comfort, Coughing, Fever, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Late at Night, Medicine, Sickfic, Tea, Tea Parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 05:00:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15678516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: When Nott's coughing wakes up the rest of the Nein, Jester doesn't like not being able to do anything. Luckily, they have one cleric who's good with medicine and one who's good at finding delightful ways to make the medicine go down.ORNott gets sick. Jester's spell doesn't work, so they have an impromptu fancy tea party in the middle of the night instead.





	Spoonful of Sugar

Jester knew that the bubble didn't actually make sounds louder. It wasn't trapping the noise in with them. It wasn't a sound barrier. But she still couldn't help wondering if Nott's coughing would have been less obvious if they'd still been sleeping in the open air.

She'd been coughing all day, a little, but it hadn't seemed like that big of a problem. Not like it did now.

Jester sat up, looking around the darkness of their shelter for a moment before getting up and stepping over Fjord to get to Nott and Caleb.

Fjord rolled over as she passed him, watching her, and she realized as she crept by Beau that the monk was awake, too, though she was trying to keep it a little more hidden. Yasha was out like a light, but now that Jester was moving and Fjord was rolling over and Caleb was rearranging so Nott could muffle her cough against his shoulder, Caduceus was sitting up with the rest of them.

Jester was starting to get used to having another healer around. She'd accepted it. It wasn't bad, just different than before. She still started moving a little faster, to be sure she would beat Cad to their patient.

Up close, it was immediately apparent that Nott's coughing was a lot worse now than it had been earlier. The coughs shook her body so hard Jester could see Caleb's arms moving with the convulsions. He was holding her loosely enough that she could easily push away from him to catch her breath in the middle of the coughing fit, gasping loudly before starting to cough again and re-burying her face in his shoulder to keep it quiet.

Caleb looked frightened when he met her eyes, so Jester smiled as brightly as she could, to make him feel better.

She knelt down next to the two of them, waiting for Nott to finish coughing, and after an excruciatingly long minute or so, she did, turning her face sideways with a moan and twisting a little in Caleb's arms to lean more comfortably against him.

Once she'd turned her head far enough to see Jester, Nott forced an exhausted smile. "Oh! Did I wake you up?" she whispered, "I'm sorry."

Jester widened her own smile a little bit, pushing harder so Nott wouldn't know how uneasy she felt about all the symptoms she was just noticing. The goblin's face looked flushed, and her eyes were glassy.

"She is burning up," Caleb whispered, apparently immune to her charms, because he sounded even more upset than he looked, "I had not noticed, but now she is -" he cut himself off, his voice sounding tight, "I think she has a fever."

Jester put a hand on Nott's head and sure enough, the skin there was hot to the touch. She hadn't spent a lot of time specifically putting her palm on Nott's forehead before, so she wasn't sure exactly how warm was normal for a goblin, but she trusted Caleb to know, and if he said Nott was too hot, then Nott was too hot.

"It's alright," she whispered, "I can help you."

She started muttering the incantation for a prayer of healing under her breath, focusing her attention on Nott, but also a little bit on Caleb. It wouldn't hurt to make sure he wasn't getting whatever Nott had - or to hope that maybe a little magical healing could keep him from freaking out too badly.

Nott watched her, her eyes less focused than usual in a way that made Jester's stomach twist uncomfortably. She focused her eyes on Caleb's shoulder instead, still thinking about Nott the way she usually was, bright and energetic.

At the end of the spell, she looked back at Nott, hoping she would look better, but everything was just the same as it had been before. She frowned.

"No, it's ok!" Nott said, "I do feel a _little_ better!" The cheer in her voice wasn't particularly convincing even before the effort of pretending triggered another coughing fit. She twisted her head into Caleb's shoulder again, and his arms tightened around her, moving with the coughs again as he held her close.

Caduceus was so big that Jester couldn't miss the sounds of him getting up. She turned to watch as he pulled himself up to his feet and came over, hunching his back a little to stay inside the bubble as he got closer to their edge of it.

He put a hand on her shoulder and she shrugged it off, because she didn't need pity right now.

"How's she doing?" he asked calmly (almost _too_ calmly, Jester thought grumpily), before changing the question as Nott stopped coughing and pulled away from Caleb to catch her breath again. "How're you doing, Nott?"

"Oh, Jester, Mr. Clay, you don't need to worry about me. I'm sure it's just all the rain outside. I'll be fine."

"No," Caleb said decisively, "You are burning up. They are Clerics. They should fix it."

It was maybe a little bit nice that he didn't look so scared anymore, but angry wasn't exactly the thing she would have picked to replace it.

She set her chin, meeting Caleb's eyes for a moment, then busted out her best smile yet.

"It's ok, Nott!" she said, "It's no trouble at _all_ and it's not like we were _doing_ anything else we need magic for anyway, and we _care_ about you, so I will try my prayer again _,_ and maybe the Traveller was just busy! Maybe that's why it didn't work! You can't expect things to work _all_ the time when people are _busy_ , though of course, the Traveller is _usually_ not too busy for me, but maybe right now he _is_ busy, and maybe there are big things happening somewhere else and we just don't know. Maybe he's just getting here a little bit slow! You don't have to feel bad just because things are a little bit slow."

This time, she reached out and held Nott's hand as she cast the spell, keeping her eyes locked on their linked hands so she could focus harder, and shoving away the half-formed thoughts that threatened to distract her when Caduceus sighed behind her.

"I'll go see what I've got left in my bag," he said calmly, and she couldn't afford to be distracted, so she forced herself to think about the words of the prayer instead.

The spell didn't work this time, either, and Nott still looked awful, leaning heavily against Caleb with her eyes still glassy and unfocused. Caleb looked - well, Caleb was hard to look at, right this minute, even more than he had been _before_ this didn't work, so Jester turned to look at Cad instead. He was still digging through the many pouches of teas and herbs and flowers he had with him, his forehead slightly wrinkled as he worked systematically through them, holding them right up to his face and smelling them.

With a satisfied snort, he tucked the extra bags and small boxes back into his bag and came back to them with just a handful of stuff. "Well," he said, still as calm as ever, "I can't say what I've got will fix you, and I haven't got the right magic for that, but this stuff ought to help."

Out of the first bag, he pulled some kind of bark. "Chew on this one," he said, "It's a little bitter, but-"

Nott put it in her mouth, biting down hard, and made a face. "A _little_ bitter?"

Cad smiled slowly, chuckling, "Ok, maybe a lot bitter. But it should help with the fever." He gestured to his other few sachets. "These are going to be tea. Just let me get the kettle going."

Nott bit into the root again. "Eugh. This tastes terrible."

Caleb reached up and put his hand on Nott's forehead again. "I can't tell if it's working yet."

Jester felt her chest tighten a little. She had a choice - back up the other healer, or hang him out to dry. But her spells hadn't worked for this, and after a split-second's hesitation, she shrugged off the impulse to get jealous.

"I'm sure it will," she said, making sure her face wouldn't betray any of the ways she was going to feel guilty if it did, "There's _lots_ of good medicines, you know. It's just you have to wait for them to work, and I don't _like_ waiting, but sometimes you have to do it anyway. I'm sure if you wait a little bit, it will help."

Nott forced another smile in return. "I'm sure you're right."

"We will be right here, either way," Caleb said softly, not meeting anyone's eyes, and Jester wondered, not for the first time, how he could be so stiff and stubborn and evasive even when he was holding Nott so gently and refusing to let go.

Caduceus made his way casually back to them, his tea set in tow this time, and started building a small fire, which Caleb hastened by moving his free hand over and shooting a small fire bolt into the pile of kindling.

Caduceus set the kettle over the flames on its stand, set out his small collection of cups, and turned to scan the rest of the dome. "Anybody else want some tea, while I'm making it? I can do multiple kinds, not just Nott's sore throat tea."

Beau groaned, but Fjord got up, brushing himself off a little awkwardly, even though he probably wasn't dirty. "Yeah," he said softly, "Sure. Since I'm up anyway."

Beau groaned again, but it was probably just for show. She'd been awake earlier, and she was clearly stirring now, rolling over to look in their direction, then pulling to her feet with a sigh. "Yeah, me too. Beats worrying over here."

"Oh," Nott said softly. Jester turned to look at her, and the color in her cheeks this time was definitely a blush, rather than just the flush from the fever. Caleb's arms tightened slightly around her again.

Caduceus counted them, counted his cups, got up to get the new cups he'd bought in town, and sat back down again, looking pleased, as Fjord and Beau came over to sit in a circle with the rest of them.

"You really don't have to-" Nott started.

Fjord cut her off, "It's alright, Nott. You'd have been worrying about us."

"Tea for everybody, then?" Caduceus asked, and Jester honestly couldn't tell whether he was trying to change the subject or whether he'd just gotten behind since he moved and thought so _slow_ sometimes.

"Nein," Caleb said, "I am ok."

Deuces looked around at them again, carefully. "Alright," he said, finally, "Just five, then. It _is_ nice having 5 cups. It's a good number."

He had more than that, now, but Jester didn't say that. Instead, she watched intently as he poured careful amounts of what she was pretty sure she recognized as one of their usual teas into four of the cups and then started measuring out pinches of several different things for Nott.

She might ask him about the plant stuff later. It wasn't really her thing, usually, but watching him do _something_ when she felt like she couldn't do _anything_ made her want to learn.

"Hmm," he said after a moment, still looking down at the cups. Then he looked up at Caleb and Nott. "You wouldn't happen to still have any of that honey on you, would you?"

Caleb nodded. "Ja. In my bag. You may have it."

A slow smile spread across Caduceus's face, and he reached over to snag Caleb's bag from behind him and dig through it for the honey. Jester wasn't quite sure what to make of the smile, but she didn't have much time to think about it before Nott bit down on the root again, shuddered a little, shifted in Caleb's arms just slightly, and started coughing again from the motion.

This time, Caleb's ears went a little pink at the edges as he bundled Nott closer to him again, tucking his head down closer to her face and murmuring, "The water is almost boiling. The honey will help."

She nodded, reaching up to pat him on the side of the face even through her coughing, and Jester felt the smile on her face easing up and turning real for a second.

Beau shifted awkwardly next to her, and as Jester turned to look at the monk, she caught Fjord watching Beau from the other side. Their eyes met, and Fjord rolled his eyes affectionately.

Warmth filled Jester's chest for a moment. It was not so good, having everyone awake when they should be asleep and having everyone in their group except the heaviest sleeper here to see that she was useless, again. But it _was_ good having her _friends_ around her, and as she let herself breathe in the warm steam starting to come from the kettle, she felt a knot in her stomach relaxing. These were her _friends_. It was going to be  _ok_.

When Nott caught her breath again, she turned back toward the rest of them. "You really don't have to drink tea with me. You can go back to sleep, if you want. I'll try to cough more quietly."

The noise Beau made was immediate and decisive and definitely not any kind of actual words, but it made Jester feel another wave of the same warmth, and she thought she might actually be convincing this time as she turned her brightest grin on Nott. "What are you talking about? I always _wanted_ to have a big tea party and now look! We're having one! I bet we could make fancy tea hats if we went through everybody's bags for hats and flowers and things. Like real fancy ladies!"

Caduceus smiled, too. "Plenty of things stay up at night. And we'll sleep better after some tea, anyway."

"Ex _act_ ly," Jester agreed, "This will be fun! Your cough will get better, and then we will just all have a nice time, and then tomorrow we can sleep in late, because you will be tired from coughing anyway, and anyway it's _nice_ sleeping in late, and we can have a nice morning rest before we keep moving."

"Yeah," Fjord said, "It is a good feeling staying in your bedroll after you'd usually have to get moving. Especially now we can make some shade in here."

Caleb looked up at the top of the bubble. "Oh. If all of us are up anyway, I could make it light in here, instead of so dark."

Jester laughed, suddenly working out why Caduceus had been moving so much more slowly and carefully than was usual, even for him. "I'm sorry, Caleb, I forgot you couldn't see," she said.

"I mean, there is fire, now, so maybe it is better I leave it alone for Yasha," Caleb said, awkwardly, before glancing up at Caduceus and continuing, "But if it would help you to see Nott better, to make sure the medicine is right, I am sure she would not mind the night light too much."

Nott groaned from her seat in his lap, but this time she didn't say anything about them leaving her alone or not worrying, which Jester thought was probably a positive step.

"I'm doing alright now that there's fire," Caduceus said, "And I'm sure Nott would tell us if she had symptoms we hadn't noticed."

Nott bit down on the root in her mouth again before she answered, but she didn't sound _too_ squirrely as she answered, "Yes, of course."

"It's just the coughing and the fever?" Caleb prompted, more gently than usual.

"And some general aching, but I think that's just part of the fever. And it's not _so_ bad. You shouldn't worry."

"Well, you're a little late for that," Fjord said, "But as long as you're breathing alright, we'll probably worry less."

As if he had jinxed her, Nott started coughing again, but Jester thought maybe she'd been listening, protests notwithstanding, because she covered her mouth with her fist instead of trying to bury herself into Caleb's shoulder again.

The water in the kettle started boiling, the rattling sound a pleasant distraction, and Jester could tell they were all watching the kettle as much as they were Nott. Caduceus lifted the kettle away from the flames and held it up in the air for a moment, feeling the vibrations through the handle in his palm until he decided the water was the right temperature.

He poured Nott's cup first, then the rest of them, and once it was done, he dribbled some of Caleb's honey into Nott's particular blend and stirred it carefully with a spoon. "There," he said, "You can go back and forth between drinking this and chewing the bark, depending on which one you feel like you need more. This won't taste _great_ , either, but it ought to help your throat, and the honey ought to make up for that and the willow bark."

Jester and the others watched, ignoring their own tea, as Nott chomped down on her willow bark one more time, making the same disgusted face, and then took the mangled piece of bark out of her mouth and placed it on her saucer. As soon as she picked up cup and saucer together, Caleb slid his hand under hers, steadying the whole arrangement, and then holding the saucer for her as she eased her hand out of the way.

The cup had looked small when Caduceus was working on the tea, picking it up in his huge hands to peer at the mixture inside, and she'd half worried that it wouldn't be enough to _do_ anything even if it was the right thing. In Nott's hands, the cup looked a lot bigger, and it was a lot easier not to worry, especially as she took her first sips and looked pleased instead of disgusted.

"It's definitely not as bad," she said, "And I think it's working a little." She took another small sip. "I can feel _something_ when I swallow, anyway. It's still very hot, though."

"Maybe more of the root while it cools down, then?" Caleb suggested.

"It's _very_ bitter," Nott complained, "I think I'd better spread out chewing on it, so I don't give up on doing it entirely."

Caleb's answering "humph" was more fond than disapproving, and Nott took another tiny sip of the tea with a grin that told Jester she at least  _thought_ she was winning the argument, before breathing the steam in too deeply and starting to cough again.

Caleb moved faster than Jester was used to from him, dropping the saucer into Nott's lap and grabbing ahold of the cup to steady it before she could spill the hot liquid on herself.

Beau reached forward to grab the saucer back, and for a moment, Jester could almost swear she'd hesitated, like she wanted to reach out and touch Nott before she pulled her hand back.

As Nott caught her breath, she made a little involuntary whining noise, deep in the back of her throat, followed by a blush as her eyes darted out toward the group.

Nott had medicine, now. She just had to take it. But she hadn't taken it yet, so if Jester was supposed to be the healer here, which she _was_ , then she still had work to do. Caduceus could make medicine, but now the trick was _taking_ the medicine, and Jester was pretty sure nobody could make that _fun_ like she could.

She clapped her hands together once, drawing the others' attention. "Good!" she announced, "Nott has her tea, now, and once she can breathe and it cools down, she can drink it and it will help her feel better, and we have _our_ tea, and now all we need to have a good middle-of-the-night tea party is some fancy hats!"

No one looked very excited yet, but that just meant she had to try harder. She glanced back over to her bag, trying to think quickly. Then she had it. She turned back into the circle with a grin. "I know! I have that cheap paper, that kind Caleb can't use for his spell things, and we can use _that_ to make hats, and then we can draw on the flowers with my paints and things! Does anybody know how to fold paper into hats? I heard you can do that!"

Beau cleared her throat awkwardly, "Yeah, I - actually, I know that one."

Fjord looked down at the steaming cups they hadn't even touched yet. "Jester, is that really-"

"Of course!" she answered, cutting him off before he could think too hard about it. Thinking too hard would just get boring, and then Nott would feel even more awkward than before, and that wasn't very good Cleric-ing, she didn't think. "It will maybe take a _little_ bit of time, but Nott already _told_ us the tea is too hot to drink yet anyway, so we _have_ a little bit of time and we might as well have a _real_ tea party with _hats_!"

She got up to get the paper before anyone else could comment, and then once they had it, even Fjord let himself get swept along, following Beau's halting and occasionally snappish instructions as she struggled to remember exactly how the hats worked.

Jester didn't realize they'd gotten loud until a sudden rustling noise from behind them turned into Yasha sitting up and looking confused. "What's going on?"

"We're making party hats!" Jester said, "For our tea party! Only the tea cooled off, so we're _also_ already drinking the tea."

"I can make more," Caduceus said, "And I have another cup. That's nice, having enough cups."

"There's more paper!" Jester supplied.

Yasha looked more confused instead of less.

Caleb stopped blowing on Nott's tea for her, looking up at Yasha instead. "Beau has already made an extra hat for me. I'm sure she could make yours. You're probably better at drawing flowers than I am anyway. I am - perhaps better at copying drawings than making them up."

Fjord took a deep breath, like he was about to explain how they'd gotten here, but Beau threw an elbow into his side to stop him before he could get started.

Yasha rubbed her eyes. "We're having a tea party?"

"Well, we were awake _anyway_ ," Jester said, taking over to make sure Fjord didn't have time to say anything that would put all the attention directly back on Nott, "And there was _tea_ , so _I_ thought, 'wow, we don't have lots of things to do and we don't have to be in a hurry and we can just have tea' so _obviously_ , we agreed we should do it the _fun_ way and wear _hats_. We could have put on some fancy gloves, too, but I don't think we _have_ any fancy gloves, I think we just have _un_ fancy gloves, but maybe we could put those on anyway after we finish the hats."

Fjord looked almost pained as he turned to look at her, but she just smiled harder.

Behind her, Nott coughed again, but the tea was helping, and every time she did, it was a little quieter, and sounded a little less painful, and lasted a little less long. By now it was even easy to trust that Caleb had gotten the tea away before she could spill it, since they'd all seen him do it out of the corners of their eyes while they checked on her.

She clapped her hands again, several times, trying to seem excited and keep Yasha's attention on herself. "I just remembered you still have those fake flowers from Hupperdook! We could put _those_ on a hat for you and you could be the _fanciest_ one at the party!"

Yasha's hand drifted absently toward her journal, with its pressed flowers inside, and for a moment, sadness moved across her face and Jester realized with a pang of guilt that she was thinking about Molly. But then she shrugged it off, managing a smile that looked gentle and most of the way real.

"I've never been the fanciest one at a tea party," she said softly, "I've never even _been_ at a tea party."

"You know, I haven't either," Caduceus said, "You'd think I would have, since I like tea so much, but when people come out to bury people, they have funerals. Sometimes there's tea at the funerals, and sometimes they're a little like parties, but you have to call it a funeral, because you're burying somebody. And most people don't wear hats."

Fjord snorted. "I'm pretty sure people don't wear _these_ hats at tea parties, anyway."

Jester frowned at him. "They're very _nice_ hats, and it was nice of Beau to show us how to make them."

"Yeah, no problem," Beau said, suddenly ill at ease now that Yasha was staring. "Just a little trick I learned as a kid. Not a big deal."

"Well, _I_ think Caleb draws very nice flowers," Nott said, her coughing under control again for the moment, "So I feel _very_ fancy."

The wizard blushed a little, and Jester took stock of the goblin's brighter eyes and more relaxed smile, and let herself feel good about all of it.

"You are, Nott," she said, "You're very fancy." Fancy and happy and healthy. They were _all_ going to be fancy and happy and healthy. They were going to be fancy and happy and healthy for as long as she could make it happen, and maybe even longer, now that Caduceus could help with the healthy part.

With one more determined breath, Jester got up to her feet to pull Yasha into the party, and as she met Cad's eyes on her way back into the circle, she felt the last of her jealousy from earlier fading away.

Twenty minutes later, Nott was asleep in Caleb's arms, her tea finished and her coughing momentarily eased, and the party had become the rest of them sitting in a circle, drinking tea and looking at each other and not talking, and everyone looked very silly in their hats, and she knew she'd done her job.

Drinking the last of her tea, carefully so that she didn't wind up with a mouthful of leaves, Jester smiled again, real and gentle and without feeling like she needed to make it a trick.

"Well," she said, as softly as she could and still have it carry around the circle, "That was a good party, and now we have hats for next time, and I'm going back to bed."

Before she went back to her usual space in the bubble, she felt Nott's forehead - which was a little bit cooler - and kissed Caleb on the forehead so he wouldn't feel so nervous, and even without looking, she could feel some of the others smiling behind her as she stepped away. It was good to be home.

**Author's Note:**

> Just... pretend she doesn't have Lesser Restoration. It's fine. Nott can roll to clear the conditions tomorrow. :P


End file.
